Urban scrawl: shades of grey

KAB101 has his own personal tagging guidelines: no
houses, no cars, no shops. Dmote goes out there to be creative. He
wants to walk away happy with what he's done. Tash says what began
as a crime ("being a little brat basically") has taken her around
the world, painting in Rome, Stockholm, Amsterdam. Lister thinks
he's improving the neighbourhood. "I see it as beautifying an
area."

These voices of graffiti writers come from Uncommissioned
Art: an A-Z of Australian graffiti. Most interviewed in the
book admit to an adrenalin rush that comes from painting illegally.
But few see their work as vandalism. Some move between the world of
"legal" art  doing graphic design and commissions  and
the street.

Brimming with colourful photos and surprising insights, this new
book by La Trobe University academic Christine Pew places graffiti
firmly in the art context. Another recent book, The Melbourne
Design Guide, celebrates graffiti from a design perspective,
with a walking tour of city lanes highlighting techniques ranging
from stencils to "NYC-style graff". When it comes to street art,
the editors enthuse, "this city is often named in the same breath
as graffiti capitals London, New York or Berlin".

Published in 2006, The Melbourne Design Guide was
"proudly" sponsored by the State Government. But one year on, this
Government has introduced harsh anti-graffiti laws that seem
radically at odds with any celebration of street art's cultural
cachet.

Under the laws, graffiti writing will become a specific offence,
with penalties of up to two years' jail. Selling spray paint to
anyone aged under 18 is banned, unless they can prove the paint is
needed for work. New offences include possessing spray paint
"without lawful excuse" on or around public transport. Police
search powers have also been strengthened.

Civil libertarians, academics, lawyers and youth advocates have
condemned these laws for reversing the onus of proof. The Law
Institute says children risk criminalisation merely for possessing
spray paint. It says this violates the crucial legal principle of
the presumption of innocence, recently enshrined by the State
Government in its own human rights charter.

Melbourne's laneway street art was created by hundreds of
anonymous artists, mostly working illegally. It features in Tourism
Victoria's Lose Yourself in Melbourne ad campaign, which is
partly set in an intriguing, spray-painted lane. "The state is
profiting from the work of artists doing it," observes Melbourne
University criminologist Professor Alison Young. "But another arm
of the state wants to prosecute and possibly imprison (such)
people."

This stance seems somewhat hypocritical, but, as a society, our
relationship to graffiti is deeply ambivalent. Last year in the
same week that one Melbourne graffiti writer was sent to jail for
vandalising trains, another artist, Nuroc, was hired by Adidas to
paint a graffiti-style billboard on Punt Road. As councils and
train operators spend millions of dollars removing graffiti,
corporations are hiring writers to secure street cred.

Public debate on graffiti is mostly a talkback shade of black
and white, with much outrage directed at "vandals". The costs
associated with graffiti removal in Australia are estimated at $300
million a year. Obviously graffiti on public transport is an
expensive problem and these laws appear designed chiefly to tackle
it. But it seems unfair that a graffiti writer may be jailed for a
non-violent crime while the perpetrator of an assault may escape
prison. While graffiti may be a costly nuisance, it's hardly as
serious as being hurt or robbed.

I find the basic black scrawled tags annoying, especially on
street signs and trains. But graffiti is a complex phenomenon and
many forms have considerable aesthetic appeal. Melbourne's network
of decorated lanes has emerged organically from the wider graffiti
culture. Many tourists admire its gritty authenticity. When you
walk down Hosier Lane, taking in the layered cacophony of voices,
you feel part of a mysterious conversation. The words and pictures
may be witty or ugly, beautiful or baffling, cryptic or plain
crazy. But these walls enlarge our sense of what's possible.

Any discussion of graffiti is replete with ambiguities. Take the
problem of definitions. Pew defines graffiti as unsolicited
markings on public or private property. But this umbrella term
covers myriad techniques including aerosol murals, tagging of
pseudonyms; spray-painted "pieces"; stencil art, stickers and paper
"paste-ups". She says the term "graffiti writer" acknowledges the
calligraphic origins of the form and "the central place the written
word, or tag, has in much contemporary graffiti art".

The City of Melbourne defines tagging or stand-alone stencils as
illegal graffiti. It designates as legal street art "larger or more
artistic pieces or murals". The council says research has found
that while most people dislike tagging, they value street art. Thus
it combines a tough stance on graffiti with a system of street art
permits. A building's owner or occupier can apply for a permit to
preserve existing work.

Such a distinction handily allows admirers of street art to
distance "artists" from "vandals" who tag or "bomb" trains. But the
demarcation is not clear-cut. While some stencil artists disapprove
of tagging, others see it as a legitimate form of graffiti
expression. Some kids who start by tagging will go on to be
acclaimed as artists.

The unofficial spokesman for Melbourne's street art is Andy Mac.
He runs the City Lights gallery in Hosier Lane and devised the tour
in The Melbourne Design Guide. He also co-ordinated the
writers who decorated the walls of Centre Place for the Tourism
Victoria ad. Most had previously done unsanctioned work in the
lane.

I recently met Mac outside his gallery, where he showed me a bit
of wall containing artworks by women from Australia, Switzerland,
France and New Zealand. We then turned left into Rutledge Lane.
"Out here things can change quickly," he says. "Some days this wall
will be different in 24 hours. It's chockers with tourists all the
time."

The lane curves between two car parks and several buildings. Its
walls are covered with pictures and words. We looked at a
tattoo-like mural, a Goya-esque head of a man and a classic piece
of New York "Wildstyle" writing with shaded three-dimensional
lettering. The ground was covered in tags. I counted 15 green
rubbish bins scrawled with writing.

As we talked, two girls of about 12 with matching pink hair
bands walked down the lane with an older woman. "Cool!" cried the
girls. "Oh look, they've even graffitied the bins."

Mac argues that while graffiti is unsolicited words and images
in public, so is paid advertising. "Nobody asks the public if they
want advertising messages all over public space." Tags, he says,
are "the root of the culture and how most kids develop". And while
the council may hope to quarantine tags from street art, there are
plenty of tags in Rutledge Lane. A tag is a signature. While some
bemoan tags as having no content apart from the assertion of
identity and presence, Pew argues that a similar logic shaped the
graffiti of Roman antiquity. Ancient graffiti found at Pompeii
reads: "Emilius the Speedy (did this) alone in the moonlight."

Still, even Mac feels annoyed by the childish tags with MySpace
addresses scribbled over murals in Hosier Lane. "The kids who come
in here from Werribee and Sunshine are wrecking this street with
their tags but that's part of how this culture is." He sees
graffiti as a democratic community movement. Its illegality, "that
mix of the unmediated, uncurated and undirected", gives it a kind
of power. At the same time, he has organised writers to do legal
commissions, including hoardings for Multiplex and a tram sponsored
by Foxtel.

Anti-graffiti campaigners often point out that your average
teenage tagger is seeking a moment of fame. This kind of
attention-seeking behaviour may be sparked by feelings of low
self-worth, anger and a lack of opportunities. Mac, too, is
disturbed by the anger of many young outer-suburban taggers he
encounters. But if youth alienation is one of the causes of
indiscriminate tagging, the new laws may well lead young people to
feel even more alienated.

The Government argues that the laws will provide a "clear
deterrent" and reduce the financial and social costs of graffiti.
According to Labor MP Martin Pakula, 95% of graffiti is not art but
"mindless vandalism".

However, Professor Young says these "repressive" laws are likely
to lead to more young people going to jail, more alienation and
more hastily executed tags. The Law Institute says the laws
discriminate against young people and fail to tackle the main
causes of graffiti-marking behaviour. Instead, they threaten "to
damage current constructive programs that aim to engage graffiti
vandals rather than merely criminalise them".

Much of the city's wittiest laneway art consists of stencils,
which are made with spray paint. Melbourne hosts an annual stencil
art festival. Where do the new laws leave stencil artists 
especially those who catch public transport? What about a kid on a
train who is doing a spray-can art assignment for school? And many
tags are done in felt pens. Will they be banned next?

In 2004, the City of Melbourne commissioned Young to draft a
graffiti strategy. Since the eradication of graffiti is "an
impossibility", she suggested the council strive to reduce the
presence of graffiti in high-profile areas and redirect writers to
zones of limited tolerance. (The council voted against the idea.)
There is, she says, no typical demographic for graffiti writers.
Many can be in their 20s or 30s.

Two of the most pervasive reasons people give for disliking
graffiti are that its presence makes them feel unsafe or somehow
neglected by the authorities. Young says a rapid response to
graffiti is often advocated in what is known as the "broken
windows" theory. This posits that social decline begins with as
simple a phenomenon as a broken window left unrepaired or graffiti
left on a wall.

However, she says research seeking to substantiate this theory
has been inconclusive. Indeed, as Pew writes, while some might view
graffiti as a symptom of urban decay or youth degeneration, others
might see it as something that "enlivens the city", suggesting a
democracy of debate.

The origins of Melbourne's graffiti crackdown can be traced to
the build-up to the 2006 Commonwealth Games. In December 2005,
Victoria Police's graffiti taskforce reported a breakthrough, with
the arrest of two alleged members of the 70K crew. 70K were
prolific taggers of trains and buildings, who used long rollers and
paint to apply especially large tags. Last year, a 26-year-old
graphic designer and member of 70K was sentenced to three months'
jail after being convicted of 42 counts of criminal damage, costing
$50,000.

He served seven weeks in jail before the remainder of his
sentence was suspended.

The Herald Sun, which has campaigned strenuously on this
issue, sometimes speaks of a "war on graffiti". But let's get
things into perspective. People aren't dying on our streets as a
result of too much tagging. It seems our official response to
graffiti is heavily shaped by ideas about the sanctity of private
property and moral panic about youth.

Law Institute president Geoff Provis is no fan of graffiti,
having recently had his own house stencilled. But he believes the
new laws have been driven by a newspaper publicity campaign,
"without having a public debate about the seriousness of the
crime".

"Make them (graffiti writers) wash it off. Make them get
involved in community programs," he says. "But imprisoning someone
is an over-reaction."

Perhaps the last word should go to the world's most famous
stencil artist, the Englishman known as Banksy. Recently profiled
in The New Yorker, he has a stencil in Angelina Jolie's art
collection and another in Hosier Lane.

"The city doesn't look like it's run by mean-spirited
bureaucrats and the police," he said while visiting Melbourne in
2003. "It looks like the city belongs to anyone who wants it."